Impact of Systemic Racism on African American Communities
Introduction
As depicted in one of Shyanne Gal’s infographic images, African American households have an “average wealth of 6,000 dollars” while white households are in possession of “102,000 dollars” (Gal 1). A primary factor resulting in this massive difference in wealth is the decades of governmental and private institutions’ segregationist policies regarding housing. Although slavery had ended in the United States, African Americans were still viewed as an inferior race in most of the 20th century and this sentiment led to the development of a prominent gap between black and white communities with governmental funding focused on white suburbs, which were unable to be accessed by African Americans. Richard Rothstein, in his book “The Color of Law,” found that under Franklin “Roosevelt’s New Deal integrated neighborhoods were demolished” and suburbs took their place; several laws were then put in place to outright ban the integration of black and white communities leading them to develop on different tangents (Rothstein 4). Rothstein is the emeritus at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Legal Defense Fund, and this position may make his study of housing segregation somewhat biased towards helping his own position making a further analysis of how African Americans are in much greater poverty than their white counterparts. This begs the question: to what extent does systemic racism continue to impact 21st-century American communities? The further study of housing segregation will help display how systemic racism from the 20th century negatively impacts African Americans today and what aid is necessary to help bridge the current wealth and poverty gap between black and white communities.
African Americans Disproportionate Suffering of Poverty
Currently African Americans are suffering much greater poverty than white Americans and this is easily seen in many of Shayanne Gal’s infographic images, one of which shows (as previously mentioned) that white families have a net worth that is 17 times greater than black families (Gal 1). Another significant infograph that she displays is the unemployment rate being 4.4 percent greater in black Americans when compared to whites. This can be attributed to African Americans’ lack of access to homes which appreciate in value as “homeownership has been the number-one method of accumulating wealth ‘’ in America (Jan 1).
One reason for this gap between African Americans and white Americans is studied by Terry Jones, a professor from California State University at Hayward, and he determines that the main reason why systemic racism affects black people today is the “liberalization of the original inferiority theory for blacks” (Jones 3). People who believe this theory essentially claim that African Ameircans are in greater poverty than whites due to personal decisions. This theory stems from the idea that blacks are inferior due to their social and economic conditions, but it fails to account for the fact that African American communities were set up for failure due to racist housing institutions and lack of financial support for these communities. According to Jones, this theory is a primary reason as to why African Americans are not given financial aid. This leads to a cycle in which African Americans are constantly not given support due to their economic status and this leads to a widening of the gap between African Americans and white Americans.
Blockbusting, Redlining, and More
Blockbusting and redlining impacted African American communities by segregating housing areas by race and giving African Americans no choice but to buy overpriced homes which were unlikely to appreciate in value due to the lack of governmental development in African American communities. Blockbusting is the act of buying homes from white people for cheap prices in integrated communities and reselling them to blacks with a markup of 80 to 100 percent. Similarly, redlining is whenever government agencies section off African American dominated areas of cities and refuse to give people in these areas loans and financial aid. Both of these methods of segregation contributed to the cycle of poverty that African Americans were thrown into and this continues to affect them today.
A common misconception among many people is that the passing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 led to the end of racial segregation in the United States but this is a dangerous misunderstanding as it doesnt help make up for the cycle of poverty that African Americans were thrown into. Brent Gaspire, a graduate student at Western Washington University claims that expenses of housing places “an onerous burden on black homeowners” and this is significant because blacks were pushed into deprecating homes which forced them to be stuck in poverty (Gaspire 2). In addition to African Americans not starting on the same ground as whites due to depreciating housing, African Americans also suffered because of the Fair Housing Act’s lack of proper enforcement making blockbusting and redlining continue for several years past its passing.
Richard Rothstein, the emeritus at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), discusses how under “Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal” integrated neighborhoods were demolished and replaced with suburbs in which only whites were allowed (Rothstein 6). Another method used by the government to segregate America was the use of zoning laws which is similar to redlining in that it splits cities by densely populated areas of blacks and whites, but differs in that it actively detriments African American communities by zoning their neighborhoods for industrial development or waste. In addition to all of these methods of segregation the most overt would be the restrictive covenants which directly prevented African Americans from purchasing or living on certain properties. These methods of segregation put African Americans at a significant disadvantage to whites in regards to escaping or staying out of poverty and the conception that the Fair Housing Act ended all segregation and put African Americans on an equal ground with whites can be clearly disproven when looking back at one of Gal’s infographic images which shows how African Americans have a significantly greater unemployment rate when compared to whites in the United States.
Tracy Jan, a Stanford Graduate in sociology, analyzes redlining on governmental maps in order to determine its impact on African Americans today and she determines through a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition that most neighborhoods that were determined as “hazardous” (meaning that African Americans live there) in the 1940s are much more likely to be made up of lower-income residents than all other areas (Jan 1). The significance of this is that it shows how redlined areas, populated mostly by African Americans, would suffer disproportionately when compared to whites of a similar income or situation.
Conclusion
This paper clearly shows how although the African Americans and whites have equal opportunities today African Americans still suffer from a cycle of poverty that they were put into during the 20th century. A major reason for African Americans to continue to suffer from institutional racism is the supreme courts lack of understand as to why Afircan Americans are in need of aid as a common consensus it that African Americans are in a cycle of poverty due to personal decisions when in reality it was caused by the government’s lack of enforcement of segregation laws and inability to recognize that African Americans were in need of aid after the years of blockbusting and redlining that they had to experience. This is a comfortable delusion on the part of the Supreme Court because it makes the Justice’s lives much easier to not deal with the consequences of the government’s prior action if they go on with the belief that African Americans put themselves in poverty. The most plausible solution would be to provide aid to underprivileged communities in America and this will help bridge the gap between suburban and inner cities in the United States. Another solution would be to place a wealth tax and use this money to support proper housing in impoverished cities. A solution which is already being implemented is inaction and letting the issue sort itself out, but this solution is clearly failing as even after several decades African Americans are still suffering disproportionately compared to whites. In all, it is imperative that these proposed solutions or another effective solution is taken in order to help alleviate the suffering of African Americans from the previous centuries institutional racism.
Works Cited
Gaspaire, Brent. “Blockbusting.” Welcome to Blackpast •, 17 Sept. 2019, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/blockbusting/.
Jan, Tracy. “Analysis | Redlining Was Banned 50 Years Ago. It’s Still Hurting Minorities Today.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/.
Jones, T. (1974). Institutional racism in the United States. Social Work, 19(2), 218–225. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23712909
Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Shayanne Gal, Andy Kiersz. “26 Simple Charts to Show Friends and Family Who Aren’t Convinced Racism Is Still a Problem in America.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 8 July 2020, www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts-graphs-data-2020-6.
